Okutone Onsen Hotel Sunbird

We came for a family ski vacation, and I especially liked the Tone beef sukiyaki. It was so tender it melted in my mouth. I also enjoyed the dishes made with the many kinds of mushrooms. We had kaiseki cuisine in the dining room.

It’s a traditional Japanese ryokan, with traditional furniture and futons that need to be laid out after the furniture is cleared away. There’s a toilet in the room but no bathroom. The public bath is fine, though a little old, while the private bath is nicely furnished. One thing: if you run into Thai visitors who don’t know the public bath etiquette, please excuse them. They might disrupt your time in the bath.

The people working here were super friendly, and the service was very nice. We loved the onsen, including the 40 minutes of private bathing time offered each day. The food was very authentic Japanese. It’s quite a trip from Tokyo, so take the shinkansen instead of wasting time on the local commuter train. For skiing, late December in the third week gave us only a thin layer of snow, or none, so we had to go to another resort to ski. January or February is probably the better time to come.

The food felt mediocre for what we paid. The private rotenburo next to the hotel was nice, but the public baths smelled like cleaning chemicals. The rotenburo attached to our room was painfully hot.